440529 - PDF printing garbles

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 454532

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Francisco Camarero]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; es-ES; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; es-ES; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

When I print to my "Acrobat PDF Writer" so that a pdf file gets generated out of the contents of the website, the actually generated pdf file contains gargabed characters. E.g.: the string "Digital Hardware" gets printed into the pdf as "' LJLWDO+DUGZ DUH' 

I can provide the pdf, as well as any web site via E.Mail.

thanx!

It did not happen with my previous mozila version..

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.explained in the details.
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
not applicable

Expected Results:  
not applicable

not applicable

Comment 1

[Richard]

Similar problem.  Win2k, Firefox 3.0.1, printing with Win2PDF pro 3.20.
Page headers are the only thing that prints correctly from Firefox.  Other text seems to be based on the wrong code page, about half the characters print as squares and special symbols, only a few correct characters.  Win2PDF prints correctly from other applications. - Richard

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

When printing receive garbled text on either printer (one Brother or other HP) in FF3. I find the problem exists in all revs of FF3.  It does not exist in FF 2.0.0.17.  And it does not exist in any version of MSIE.

Comment 3

[David E. Jones]

FF 3.0.5. prints garbage to Acrobat PDFWriter, a very old version. Printing to Acrobat 5 Distiller freezes Firefox. Both give the "This document failed to print" error that I've come to expect for years. Printing to CutePDF Writer is ok.

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Can you try with Acrobat Reader 9 (or the latest version of whatever printer software you are using), and Firefox 3.0.5. Also, safe mode or a new profile could be necessary. The top of  http://quality.mozilla.org/bug-writing-guidelines has instructions.

Also, a link to a PDF that shows this with instructions to reproduce there would be helpful.

Comment 5

[cmtalbert]

> Also, a link to a PDF that shows this with instructions to reproduce there
> would be helpful.
Actually, if anyone that can reproduce this with the current adobe pdf plugin, please attach that pdf to the bug using the "Add attachment" mechanism above.

Comment 6

[Richard]

Attachment: Web page www.sapo.co.za printed using Win2PDF Pro ver 3.2 from win2pdf.com

Web page www.sapo.co.za has been printed and attached.
We used Win2PDF Pro ver 3.2 from win2pdf.com to print.
Have been using this pdf software for 5 years without problems in many apps including cad and iexplorer.
Problem only occurs with latest version of Firefox.
Have also occasionally found printing garbage from Firefox when using HP laserjet.
Our OS is Win 2000 SP4.
Locale is set to English (South Africa).

Comment 7

[peter]

I have the same problem with FF3.0.8: printing to Adobe Acrobat PDFWriter, under win2000 sp4.  I this pdfwriter is from Acrobat 5.0 (i.e., it is pdfwriter v5.0, which I believe is the last released version of pdfwriter).  This problem even occurs for plain ascii text files to viewed in FF3 to be printed to pdf.  It also occurs in safe mode with a blank profile.

The problem DOES NOT occur if instead I print to pdfcreater v0.9.3.

The problem DOES NOT occur if instead I print to "Adobe PDF", which is the more general pdf printer shipped with Acrobat 5 and perhaps 6.  The version I have currently says it outputs Acrobat 5 compatible pdf.  I can't tell if this is the version that installs with Acrobat 6 or Acrobat 5, since I have both installed.

The problem DOES NOT occur if instead I print from IE v6.0.2800.1106 to the same pdfwriter device.

The problem DOES NOT occur if instead I print from FF2.0.0.20 to the same pdfwriter device.

Opera 9.64 ALSO HAS a problem printing to the Acrobat pdfwriter, but it is less severe:  some lines of the text file are omitted and it seems to have some issues with page breaks, but no garbled (i.e. wrong font map) text occurs in the visible pdf.

[For those of you wondering why we geezers are using old software such as acrobat pdfwriter, especially when we have other options installed:  it is a lot faster and usually requires less clicking and typing.  I would, however, point out that it does have various bugs that I have discovered in the past, and it may well be that this bug is a pdfwriter bug.  However, some of the other browsers do not tickle this bug, nor do any other apps.  I also woudn't be surprised if it is a win2k bug.]

(I would caution anyone running win2k and Acrobat 6, from trying to install the latest acrobat reader to test what is going on, because my experience is that this will irretrievably break your installation of Acrobat 6, requiring a full reinstall of Acrobat 6 and all updates and security patches, some of which do not install properly without trickery.)

Comment 8

[peter]

Attachment: ASCII text file which is garbled when printed by FF3 (uninstal.txt from Ghostscript 8.64)

I will separately attach the garbled pdf that is created from this text file by printing from FF3 to Acrobat PDFWriter 5.0.

Comment 9

[peter]

Attachment: Garbled pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from FF3 to Acrobat PDFWriter 5.0.

Note this pdf was attached using the type 'text/plain'

Comment 10

[peter]

Attachment: Semi-garbled pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from Opera to Acrobat PDFWriter 5.0.

Comment 11

[peter]

Attachment: Good pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from FF2.0.0.20 to Acrobat PDFWriter 5.0.

Comment 12

[peter]

Attachment: Good pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from FF3 to pdfcreator v0.9.3

Note that the version of pdfcreator that I used is not the most recent one, but I believe it can still be found on sourceforge and is GPL.

Comment 13

[peter]

PDFwriter has many options one can set.  I am too lazy to tell you all the settings that are set on mine, but here's a couple: the print processor is winprint with a default data type of RAW.  Also, it is set to embed all fonts except the standard windows truetype fonts of arial, courier new, symbol, and roman.

I also note by loooking at the pdf's that I attached that pdfwriter is generating pdf 1.2, which pdfcreator is generating 1.3.  I will see if I have another pdf printer that can be set to generate pdf 1.2.

Comment 14

[peter]

Attachment: Good pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from FF3 to "Adobe PDF" set to generate pdf 1.2.

Incidentally, I see from the pdf document properties that "Adobe PDF" is actually Acrobat Distiller 6.0.1.

Comment 15

[peter]

Attachment: Garbled pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from FF3 to Acrobat PDFWriter 5.0.

Note application/force-download.  (Sorry I didn't realize to do this before.)

Comment 16

[peter]

Attachment 370793 [details] is the same file as 370785.  I am resubmitting the previous series of pdf attachments as application/force-download.  370793 was the first resubmittal; the rest follow.

Comment 17

[peter]

Attachment: Semi-garbled pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from Opera to Acrobat PDFWriter 5.0.

application/force-download

Comment 18

[peter]

Attachment: Good pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from FF2.0.0.20 to Acrobat PDFWriter 5.0.

Comment 19

[peter]

Attachment: Good pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from FF3 to pdfcreator v0.9.3

application/force-download  see obsoletes for more details

Comment 20

[peter]

Attachment: Good pdf that is created from the previously attached text file by printing from FF3 to "Adobe PDF" set to generate pdf 1.2.

application/force-download  see obsoletes for more details.